Let Graham and Sam enjoy moderating each other when this finally falls apart....

I am sure that Steven Schwartz would have stopped the noise for the illegal engines, Sam and Grah are two very thoughtful and mature persons, and I say this although they had differing opinions to my own. Their mastership could be described as follows, they have a somewhat consitant mindframe and dont change it every seasons, in other words it's impossible to corrupt them.

Although I admire the US practice of openess in science which led to the opensource model, I fear that even Americans didnt quite understand that this concept has limits. Look into the military for example. A community shouldnt follow nonsense that leads to suicide. Academics should understand that.

I had many months now trying to understand two questions. Why Bob supported the Ippo development? I didnt find a solution. When would Rybka 4 be a success: only with a plus Elo of 150? Here I found out that the question is already stupid. Because there is no absolute value of a software update in computerchess when the strength is mostly defined by hardware. A chess software for 36 € which leads all rankings and wins all tournaments is IMO better than open engines on lower ranks. For those in chess who must know what the God's moves are they must have the strongest Rybka 4 on clusters. Top GM and corr players. It's crazy that many interested wrongly assumed that the strength of a software could be seen as hardware-independant!

I wish that at least all the academics who have the better hardware in their brain will come back soon to the forum, that was also in that respect state of the art in computerchess. IMO the actual situation was initiated by outcasting the World Champ Vas Rajlich 5 years ago plus then the dirty campaign against Rybka. Let's come back to a new chapter with respect for ethical bases. The motto should be: No support for criminal attempts by invisible cowards!

P.S. It's self-understanding that I want to mention the sad event from Leiden when Larry Kaufman had to go to the clinic. Let us all wish him well, because beyond all the conflicts in the community we shouldnt forget that we are all only humans and no machines. Let's treat us mutually with care so that we can enjoy our hobby as older seniors as long as possible.

I wish you all the best and may sanity and creativity be with you.

Rolf

I'll say this again, "Bob doesn't support the Ippo* development". I do not know what the thing is, nor where it came from. We (the moderators when it first appeared) chose to not allow links to the program or its web site, although we felt obligated to allow discussions about the program since that is what CCC is _supposed_ to be about. As soon as Vas made the claim that this was a clone, we acted. And then we waited for some evidence. And waited. And waited. Until it became apparent that no evidence was forthcoming. After 3 months, we decided that it was unfair to take a claim with absolutely no evidence, and penalize a program. ICGA has done this in the past where a claim is made, immediate evidence is demanded, and either the evidence upholds the claim and the program is not allowed to compete, or the evidence does not support the claim and the program is accepted.

I have nothing to gain from the Ippo* project, nor anything to lose. I am not one of the authors, I am not a user, so have no dog in this hunt. I simply believe that without evidence a claim can not be taken seriously. And we don't have anything but anecdotal evidence here. A says "xxxxx", B thinks "yyyyy". That's not good enough.

If the owners of ICD want to dictate what is allowable and what is not, that represents a huge problem because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Steve _never_ made any such attempts. Things have changed. For the worse. Not to mention Graham's moderation philosophy.

As far as this "personal attack against Vas" you keep mentioning, my only comment deals with his ethics (or lack thereof) with regard to copying code from Fruit and then denying that this happened, completely. He'd have fared much better in "the court of public opinion" had he simply said "I started with the fruit source, but have modified it heavily and today little if any of that code remains." We didn't get that kind of honesty however. We got "silence".